Making a difference

Who we are

Time to Talk is a confidential counselling service available free of charge to young people* and at affordable rates for adults in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire**.

Our counselling team is made up of paid professionals and volunteers. All our counsellors are carefully chosen; trained to work with young people and adults and are fully qualified or in the advanced stages of their counselling training. They all receive supervision, are fully insured and abide by the BACP (British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy) code of ethics.

We practice counselling through a variety of therapeutic models including person-centred or psychodynamic approaches, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and others. We offer a mixture of open-ended counselling where there is no fixed limit to the number of sessions offered at the outset, and a fixed number of sessions – usually between 6 and 12.

*Free to young people aged 11 to 19 or up to 25 if you have special needs. From £10 an hour for adults aged 19 or over.

** Unfortunately due to the ending of the funding agreement no appointments are available in Berkshire. Once a new provider has been appointed these details will be shared.

Meet the team

Our counsellors are committed to ongoing training and development and bring knowledge and experience of best practice to their clients.

Chris Cartwright

Chris Cartwright is the Counselling Coordinator for Chilterns and South Bucks and coordinates the service at Way In in Chesham. Chris is a qualified person-centre counsellor with over 10 years’ experience. She also has qualifications in CBT, counselling people with learning difficulties and is embarking on a level 5 qualification in psychodynamic counselling.

Before training as a counsellor, Chris worked in a special school and is very experienced with supporting young people with behavioural and learning issues. Chris works out of Way In, is in two schools and runs the safeguarding training for all new recruits.

Deepa Ashiani

Deepa Ashiani is the Counselling Administrator. Deepa supports the team in a variety of ways: including, taking referrals, organising the referral schedules, liaising with clients, counsellors, schools, arranging appointments for the agencies and organising the recruitment of volunteers. Deepa supports the volunteers, manages the collection of data for our contractual returns to our commissioner and events training calendar.

Deepa has 10 years’ experience in working in Administration and has completed NVQ Level 2 and 3 in Business Administration.

Melanie Williams

Melanie is Counselling Services Manager. She has a business development background and manages operations and developments, including a fundraising strategy for the service. She works closely with Schools and GPs to set up new placements and venues for counselling, and is also a qualified counsellor, working privately and registered with BACP.

Lin Short

Lin has been counselling for almost 20 years, mostly with young people and is a registered member of BACP and also a Clinical Supervisor. Lin is BPS accredited and has been supervising other counsellors for ten years. She is an integrative counsellor and uses Person-Centred, CBT and Motivational Interviewing modalities of counselling. Lin really enjoys working with young people as their future is important to her.

We're here to listen and help

Time to Talk is managed by Adviza Partnership which is a Thames Valley charity that supports vulnerable people, helping them to raise their aspirations and achieve their full potential.

Adviza services range from counselling and mentoring young people who are struggling to cope, to advice and information for students making important choices about their careers, and support for job-seeking adults in the local community. In everything we do we aim to remove barriers and build confidence.

Most of our work is funded, but we also sell some services to help raise our own funds. Over the years, like many charities, we have witnessed significant cuts in Government funding, especially in areas that were designed to support vulnerable young people.

As a not for profit organisation, we are committed to reinvesting any income to support those most in need.